Sit to it. A charming day to begin. Sit down and take a walk. Yes, my protagonist a listless lady, no more young. Aged and virtuous and badtempered woman. I must write it without nostalgia. Throw in local color. All I know. The onelegged sailor on crutches just now? Angry. Growling. Not right for my little book. Post traumatic, you see, home from war, leg left behind. O Lord, look upon Thy servant laboring under bodily weakness. Cherish and receive the soul which Thou hast created, so that, purified by his sufferings, he may soon find himself healed by Thy mercy. Through Christ our Lord. A charming woman with such a, what should I say? Such a queenly mein. Did she commit adultery fully with her husband’s brother? Eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris? Only her confessor would know and we never tell. Secrets. God created the sexual drive for more than procreation but why? The ways of God are not our ways. I’ve heard much from our good people. An aged and virtuous and badtempered woman wants to keep confessing. Bless you my child now get on with you. Bless you my child. Off you go. Amen. Amen now. I bear your secrets confessed. Now the book. A woman like Mrs. Sheehy, two boys. Young, delightful boys. Wonderful little schoolboys. Asked after Father Vaughan, his sermon on Pilate impressed her. Simple, respectable woman. He has been transferred again to another parish. He won’t be back. The ways of God are not our ways. But my little book. A woman perhaps like Mrs. McGuinness, stately like Mary, Queen of Scots. A pawnbroker, imagine that. Doing quite well these days. What time is it? The ninth hour. The death of Christ, his descent into hell. People are more open to temptation at this hour. More than any other time. I must be guarded. Protect my soul, God’s soul if one might say, created by God. We die a bit in this hour; our souls descend to hell. In this hour Adam and Eve, serpent plagued, were driven from the garden. Viperous temptations. And fasting. Don’t eat of the fruit. Don’t eat of anything. Nothing into the mouth. Respectful, grave, Mr. Denis J Maginni professor of dancing and much else surprises passersby with the contrasting effect of a serious disposition with tight lavender skinnyjeans. This is the hour schoolboys leave their lessons and raise their young mouths in play, young cries in the quiet. Schoolboys, good boys. What was that boy’s name? Dignam. Yes. Martin Cunningham’s request. Yes. Yes indeed. Oblige him if possible. Youthful bodies bounding in play. Good boys at school. Good little men. Grow up. Become like the young man and his young woman emerging from the shrubberies. God’s ways are not our ways. His face, flushed looking two ways toward terror and pity. Rubbing his groin in his pockets. Looks two ways toward desire and loathing. Rubbing his groin. A hooded reptilian face. poignant eyes, reptile like. Self-embittered: a shriveled soul. That tyrannous incontinence necessary to maintain our race on earth. Then death to so many, and so many unprepared. Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed then give them to Corny Kelleher to prepare for burial. I feel it incumbent upon myself to say a few words before I descend into excessive solemnity. I like cheerful decorum. Perhaps I will join them together, bride and bridegroom. Beautiful weather today. A charming day. Delightful indeed. A peaceful day.

I am the author of each entry. I use quotes from other authors for most of the image captions and credit them in the tags. Image credits can be found in the tags too if I did not take the image myself. Same goes for translations. I do all the Old English, some of the Spanish, and all but a few of the Dante translations.

Hay. Just passing the time. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing to see here, move along. I just heard a little news from my friend there, just passing by on his rounds, that’s all. Nothing in particular, mind, just a bit of something. Would be more useful with a picture; got to make a living. Just breathe your best news to me a little, I’ll be silent as the grave. Heard that noise did you? Gasses escaping. Ok so the dead do make some sounds now and then. We die a bit in this hour. I must be guarded. Protect my soul, God’s soul if one might say, created by God. They breathe stuff out; can’t blame them for that. So what do you know? Spit it out. A generous arm a woman’s hand from a window flung forth a coin. I’ll take your secret to my coffin. I take care of my regulars, they take care of me. Capisci? I’ve got my ear to the ground, we can do an exchange. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. You go first. Don’t think you’ll be throwing your money out the window, nobody’s more faithful than me.

AMERICA! AMERICA! GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE motherfuckers. Uncle fucking Sham. Sham! The fucking shit I had to go through for what. GOD SHED HIS GRACE! Try having your best friend die in your fucking arms if you still have both of them. It don’t mean nothin. Lazy jerks. I have to crutch myself around for all eternity. Try saving a five year old from starving in Iraq then watching him walk twenty yards and be blown to fucking pieces because there was a landmine planted there no one knew about. It don’t mean nothin. Fucking kids starving right here. In AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL. Most of us just tried to get by. FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA! Get shot at you’ll do what you have to do. That’s the fucking tragedy in it. Not my damn leg smeared all over hell, thank Christ for it. Got me out. Even if I have to beg every day for the rest of my damn life. AMERICA! AMERICA! MAY GOD THY GOLD REFINE! Not every nineteen year old too poor for life joins the army and automatically becomes a hero. GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE. Shed his grace on my ass. Reformatted and deployed. Obey the order to occupy a LZ. There are grid coordinates I couldn’t find again if I was pissing on them. What am I a fucking hero because I played the biggest video game of them all? It don’t mean nothin. For a bunch of fuckers who promised to take care of all of us. Serve and you’ll be better off later. Even trade. Jack came right at the wrong time to work out a deal. He needs money, you can see it just looking in his face, and I need a favor. Now be a good little hero. Worse fucking off now I’m back. Uncle Sham. Takes care of his own. People making billions off this shit while I trade my invisible leg for change. I’ll go to the singing woman’s window again. Unfurnished Apartments and I can’t afford to live under the stairs. But she’ll be good for it. And I’ll keep coming back for more TILL SELFISH GAIN NO LONGER STAIN THE BANNER OF THE FREE!

Burned myself. Not bad though, I won’t say anything. I don’t want to add to their troubles. That’s if I could. All they feel all they see all they are is hungry. There’s nothing else. Hunger is eating us and we are becoming hunger. Katey and Boody will be here any second and they’ll want to eat. It’s a mistake to want food when you are hungry. Better not to think of it and feel blessed when it comes. Thank God for Sister Mary Patrick. Viperous temptations. And fasting. Don’t eat of the fruit. Don’t eat of anything. Nothing into the mouth. We can feel human without curtains, but lack of food reduces us to rag dolls. Barang! Limp and weak. It took all I had to walk to Sister Mary Peter. If I could take a vow of poverty too, I’d be better off. We all would be, I could save us eventually, but I worry about the start of it. Are you saved? Elijah is coming! All are washed in the blood of the lamb. The vow of chastity I’ve already taken. I am mother and wife with no husband. I sent Dilly to find father before he drinks everything we have. She has her shoulders in her ears and Stephen in her eyes. Wants to see Paris and write poetry. She’s hungry for it: another mistake. It breaks her heart when we sell the books, but McGuinness’s wouldn’t give anything for them today. Try again somewhere else and stave off feeling our salvation sailing away.

Why did I let him take the flower? I’m shamefaced just thinking about it. The one thing here that’s mine. And him sending port and pears and peaches and a jar of that nasty junk to an invalid. Again: different invalid. Doesn’t seem the charitable type to me. Other way around, I’d say; I let him take a good long look at my peaches and pretended not to notice. Notice a few different titles here today. Maybe something new in the back. Let him look. My little gift. I counted fruit and waited for the H E L Y ‘S guys go past again. Y is pretty cute. Too bad he has to follow that creepy E all day. Wouldnt mind hooking up with my flower thief but I’ll probably just end up with Y. Or with my luck E! God scrub that thought from my brain right now! Ick. Well. Flirting with customers never goes anywhere so what’s the damage? He’s a nice dresser, I wonder who is his invalid this time. And what’s she going to do with a basket of fruit? Wouldn’t impress me. Hello! he’s getting off the phone. Maybe I’ll give him another peek.

Maestro Artifoni calls it a sacrifice, but a choice? No. One of the possibilities possible: I might sing for my supper. I have that talent, that’s mine. But his advice came in late. My exile, my return, I was there, now I’m here. 3/4 at 160. His timing is off. But I am grateful to him, his handshake given to me, a touch that didn’t take, but it is in vain.

4/28 Thoughts immediately following meeting with Ned Lambert, great-nephew of the late esteemed and most dearly lamented Hedges Chatterton. A kinder and gentler soul has never breathed, and it was indeed, how shall I say, instructive to be in the presence of a near relation of that great kind man.

The building interior will require great care whilst photographing; I must bring the proper lenses when I return to this interesting place. Also, I must expect and plan for difficulty in photographing around such large sacks of seeds and grains.

I fear clearing the bags away from the window will not suffice and perhaps I might prevail upon Mr. Lambert to ask his friend, Mr. Jack Crotty was it? to return to help us remove everything from the place altogether. Although I suspect this Mr. Crotty or Crosshaven might not do for the job. He appeared a bit down in the tooth. I fear my presence may have delayed or arrested altogether what I suspect to have been delicate and perhaps pressing business. I shall ask Mr. Lambert for a more formal introduction to this gentleman as I cannot expect my name is known to all men.

Kitty bending slowly and carefully removed from her skirt a clinging twig.

I understand Mr. O’Madden Burke to be a great voice of experience and a man of gay disposition and character and I must remember to prevail upon him for a copy of his forthcoming article. Perhaps I shall call upon him in the course of my business whilst I am in town.

Mr. Lambert appears well up in history but I do feel his information may require some fact checking. Was that a purple suit he was wearing? Surely it was the light playing tricks. Indeed it must have been.

In short, Mr. Lambert met me with great cordiality and indeed our brief conversation proved much more agreeable than the other sordid business which brought me this long way from my dear home, the sight of which cannot come sooner. I must take care with my clothing upon my return to this place. The dust from those sacks! Dear mother of Moses I fear I never shall stop sneezing! I do hope I have not caught cold.

Rochford is Boylan with impatience for me to show Blazes his bit of code when I see him later. I’ll sound him out. This is it, whatever sense you want to make out of it: 010101000111010101110010011011100010000001001110011011110111011100100000010011110110111000100000001010000111000001100001011110010010000001100001011101000111010001100101011011100111010001101001011011110110111000100000011101000110111100100000011101000110100001100101001000000110111001101111011101110010111000101001 Richie Goulding on financial business for Goulding, Collis and Ward walked blindly toward a woman no longer young, smiling, as she rushed, fully absorbed, toward him, on her way from superior courtroom W-331 to courtroom E-173. Money to be made, Tom says, telling people what they see now. Label the now and they’ll enjoy it more. Augment that reality. From Boeing Field, a string of stretch suv’s, one bearing flags, made its way toward the freeway. Maybe money there but I’ll get mine some other how. I have my methods. He’s a hero, Tom, you know that? Saved somebody stuck down a manhole, the one just down there under the poster of that dauby chick with the yellow hair. Poor devil stuck halfway to hell choking to death on sewer fumes and down went Tom, tied a rope around him and up they hauled them both. The act of a real hero. Ambulance. Can’t hear myself type. Anyway, the race is on soon. Bantam Lyons is putting everything he’s got on a horse somebody gave him that hasn’t an ice cube’s chance in hell. McCoy kept himself out of it. I can take my time; she doesn’t need these steaks yet. I don’t think he appreciated my story about that dinner at Glencree either; he has some kind of feeling for Bloom maybe. Says his wife sang there but did she? Come on. She a star? Please. The bright stars fade. Anyway, it was blue o’clock in the morning when we left with the car top down and I sat next to Bloom’s wife trying to get her top down. Unfurnished Apartments, picked up and placed again on the window sash. Bloom playing the astronomer pointing out this comet and that comet and stars and stars. Left me to pay attention to his wife’s moon. What star is that Poldy, she said. Just a pinprick, needle dick. He’s all right, though, Bloom.

Frillies for Raoul. Raoul! Raoul’s hands feeling the opulent curves inside her deshabille. Yes. Feeling her fishgluey slime, the phlegm wherein our sulphur is decocted, turned to gold. The sulphur of the living male soul, yes, uniting body and spirit. This is a good one. Fire and air burning in the sweets of sin. Yes, end. Hot, dry, active, king red lion, crowned burning consuming corrupting the heaving what? embonpoint, the fishgluey green queenly lioness matter uniting, mingling, heaving with leonine sulphuric form. Young, living prima materia. No longer young, an elderly woman alive and joyful rushed from courtroom W-331 where the honorable and sober Judge Schapira had just called recess in the case of Deluna vs. Dickhoff et al, 10-2-14157-0SEA and hurried smiling toward courtroom E-713 where she may witness the equally honorable and even more sober Judge Lum express detached irritation caused by an inner yet unpressing need to defecate in the case of Oberg vs Knight 10-2-31223-4SEA. Burning in dung the prima materia, sulphur fixing and coagulating, volatile spirit, mercury, dissolving his fixed matter. The cheery matter of Denis J. Maginni, dancing instructor etc. mingled incongruously with his dour spirit. Tumescence, detumescence. Then birth, a child born every minute somewhere. Enough. End. The sweets of sin, for Raoul! Yes.

I had been waiting all day, watching the pawn shop. Instructive. Then he came round the corner, half drunk. The look of him. An embarrassment. On whose shoulder will I rest my head, coming from a situation like this? He had money.

Melancholy God, how long had she been standing there looking like her uncle with her head on her shoulder. She’ll get curvature of the spine if she doesn’t watch out. An embarrassment standing there. Wants money.

I smelled he had been drinking now, but I learned from him how to get what we need. Wait awhile, I thought, and I talk something out of him. Just wait awhile. He gave me $5.00. It was short shrift for a long day, watching the pawn shop for hours. He’ll leave us first chance he gets. He says so, but we are still stuck with him. We are worse off for him but if he died? Even worse. Watching all day. He said he got ten bucks but I know he has more. Can’t he look money somewhere? Well, he is funny, my dad.

I was not drinking, then. Who taught her to talk like that? Insolent pack of bitches. They’ll get short shrift and a long day from me. I’ll leave them. They’d be happy to see me dead, curse their souls. She should watch that pawn shop, learn something. Told her I got $10.00 from Jack Power. Where am I going to look for money? It’s not like it’s just lying around in the gutters waiting to be picked up. She got three more quarters out of me. Skinny thing needs to eat something. I’ll be home with her soon. My girl.

A series of stretch suv’s (one bearing flags) enters a highway cleared of cars.

We. The two roaring worlds without and within: beingless beings. And I. Shatter them and myself in one blow. Am I bitterer against others or against myself? Me, we. They, two women no longer young carry home from the sea a midwife’s bag with trailing navel cord containing eleven cockles. Dilly, wants to speak French and visit the Paris I created. Is it any good? The shadows of my mind. I see her mirror me. Who do others see when they see me? Do they see me timedulled and dusty? Dreaming worlds words. Dilly, lying in bed with her imitation gold bracelet seeing herself as Dan Kelly sees her. Se el yilo she can say, nebrakada masculinum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen. Nebrakada. A mashup of words. What does it mean? Neb: because, brak: lack, braka: crashing, ne: not, rakad: shave, rak: linear, kada: when. Da. I see it now. Yes. Woo me with Stephano Dedalo, alumno optimo, palmam ferenti: words of my longing. Father Conmee longing for the hours, murmurs vespers five hours early. Dutch, Swedish, Czech, Portuguese, Polish, French, Croatian, Russian. An American word. What are you doing here? Who has passed here before me? You? Are you we? Tell me the secret of all secrets. Amor me solo! Your world behind the glass, and my world within the glass, and between them we swirl. Smash your way into me, my misery. We will be we. Together we will drown our agenbite of inwit. We will be the darkness shining in brightness. We will coil our inwit in our seaweed hair and sing it to sleep. Fair beautiful sleep. Then we will bite! We will chew! We will drown it in a salt green death. We shall be misery standing from everlasting to everlasting.

Well there’s a butt scratcher for you. Jacko is walled up in the empty larder hungry for nuts, a mating pair of lions prowling outside it wanting to open their mouths and swallow him whole, and a bear over there they invited to dinner and who just might want to eat first and on his own. Who has the prior claim makes no difference when the monkey is too skinny to eat. Give him a few days. Fatten him up one piece of fruit at a time. Give him time to make a plan, caught as he is between Love and Reuben J Barrabas. Let him find a way to sing for his supper, get some help. Murmuring in quiet conversation with his imagination Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrel glassyeyed, adjusted the line of his trajectory into a parabolic arc in order to avoid walking on the inside of a street light. Have you heard me sing? Some say I’m too loud. Walking proudly with the attendants of his imagination the Reverend Hugh E. Love walked toward the ancient bridges of yore majestic in their time. Why, God eternally curse your soul will you look at that. I just lost a button. Did you hear it fall? About the size of a filbert. Well, no matter, I threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.

I’ve tried so many people I can’t tell if I’m coming or going. School for the children, money, insurance question. Insurance later with Bloom, much kindness in him. Poor Dignam, decent little soul, a bit low sized. We’ll help his children up, and his widow, give them peace. Down to me to arrange it. Burned by gold heads appear above the crossblind of their usual window. She won’t have to ascend and descend other’s staircases. Descending the staircase, Nannetti, hailed his fellow council members ascending the staircase. Dual mirrors in a shop window supervise Blazes Boylan, virile, energies rising, intercepting Bob Doran, emasculated, on the downward arc of his annual bender. Jimmy Henry and Long John Fanning: they’ll give on the spot, no hesitation, no questions. They’ll do it purely for goodness’ sake.

No-one is anything. I am a ghost. Well, I haven’t died yet, no need to look at me as if my mind is off in some happy hunting ground somewhere. I mean I have moved to an atemporal state without ever having died. This is not resurrection, not metempsychosis. I have translated. You’ve done this too, occasionally. You’ve lost track of time, before, yes? That can happen when your world speeds up, when so much is happening that the whirlwind around you speeds time forward until you say you were so busy, had so much fun, were so distracted with it all, there was so much, so much, that time took flight. This is not translation. Translation comes from a deliberate slowness. A stretching of the nothingness between full moments. A pulling apart of discreet events until you inhabit the eventlessness between. Time cannot reach you there. Try it again, you’ve done it before. You might make it happen for short spaces of time, short times of space with practice. Like a muscle, the more you use it, the more supple, the more pliant. Begin by cultivating your vision. Practice seeing without seeing: use your unseeing eye. It helps to develop an idée fixe. Find something with symbolic power. For me it is chess. Ah chess. It contains the entire universe. All of being and non-being, ever facet of the soul and the spaces between the facets beautifully composed onto 64 white and black squares. I found chess in America. I went after an American war to purchase land cheap, thinking I would grow cotton. Instead I grew peaches. Peach trees need little care. Plant them, they blossom, then they grow. Then peaches. All they ask is we permit their becoming by staying clear of their being. Then one harvest and endless solitude. While my trees grew in Alabama I went to Atlanta and played chess. The beauty, the harmony, of Zarathustra’s great invention! In chess our adversaries move according to our moves, and we to them. We form a helix coiling in a beautiful deadly dance, a rhythm of infinite possibilities. 64 squares, 8 X 8, infinity times infinity. 8 is the number of judgement. And 64, 6+4=10, the perfect number. The first triangular number to have a center, and the only one whose center is half of its total. Balance. GOD MEND THINE EVERY FLAW! A onelegged sailor with an idée fixe crutched angrily, translating himself from the sidewalk into a jagged alley. CONFIRM THY SOUL IN SELF CONTROL! Symmetry. The number of the soul. 10 represents the wheel of destiny and of retribution. This is the number that governs returns, reincarnation, transmigration, metempsychosis, and most especially translation. Judgement in delicious tango with destiny. Ponder it, hang your gaze over a chessboard, and you can translate into a ghostbright existence where nothing is wanting, nothing is required, and the only fear is the hell of dreaded stalemate. And the joy! The joy of creation! Each game a new universe. Each chess problem (oh the composition of chess problems!) a microcosm of temporal harmony. Each piece on the board a representative of stillness and force. I left America, and the glorious atemporality I found there, to become a politician in support of my younger brother. I was his pawn in a greater cause. We are all pawns in a greater cause. Just what is the cause, well that is not the pawn’s business. Pawn’s have to earn their power, to kill, to rule as Queen; that is the glory of being a pawn. Most remain powerless. We serve our purpose quietly, in a waking sleep, then translate to the side to await our next use. The halls of government contain chess rooms and in my political service to my brother I played chess. I spoke on record 13 times in five years. My brother hated and feared the number 13 although I found it immensely satisfying to open my mouth and make 13 utterances, speak questions I didn’t care to have answered, and then stop altogether. I played chess. I play chess. I thought to master it and instead learned that my salvation, my translation to the infinite, comes when chess masters me. Elijah is coming! Elijah, a crumpled throwaway, sails closer to the three masters, bound to its translation.

Well. Here’s something. Alexander Dowie, coming with Elijah to save my soul. God’s curse on you, bitch’s bastard. None are so blind as those who claim to see. Dowie. Are you a god or a doggone clod? I don’t need you to sense the cosmic force for me. I don’t have cold feet about the cosmos. Come and get me! Go ahead and try, I shun the light; lets see what you can make of that! Come on Cosmos, use that force on me! Come get me God damn it. Are you up for it? Do you have cold feet? I’m willing, now force me!

You’re reading me. Oh my God I feel you. Wow. Are you shitting me? I can’t believe this shit I see you. Holy freaking shit. Ok. Ok. I’m cool be cool. Um. yeah. Now this is real. I’m real. I thought about this. I was just thinking about this. No way dude. I wanted you to read me and here you are. Wow. This shit will knock you into the middle of next week. So. Right before I thought about what it would be like when you read about my dad dying and think about me how sad, I had an argument with myself. The me on the left was thinking about how damn glad I am to be the hell out of there. I can’t take any more crying, mostly without tears. Uncle Barney leaping in to take care of everything, sending me off with five bucks for pork steaks and wanting change back. Wow. I snuck some of that sherry from Tunney’s which was super gross, give me a minute. I’m still blown away. Anyway. Then the other me on the right, my left when I’m looking at you was thinking about the fight. Cinco de Mayo, I missed it. Floyd Mayweather Jr and Miguel Cotto. Mayweather is the best in the world. He’s got the brains for it even after getting head butted by Victor Ortiz. Accurate. Best technical fighter. Brutal too, going to jail for beating up his girlfriend. But they want him to fight Cotto first. Money talks then he walks. Mayweather wants it, but Cotto wants it more. He’s a bleeder, so he puts on a good show, and he’s hot for it. He had a point to prove against Margarito’s plaster hand wraps and he’s back baby. And he’s at peace and peaceful is more dangerous than angry in a fight. I should know. Dad was perfectly calm when he belted me over that picture of naked Lady Gaga. I wonder if my friends will read this too? See it online somewhere maybe. See I’m in mourning, dressed for a funeral. Did you see that guy just now with the red flower in his mouth? Smiling at that drunk he was listening to. See what he was wearing? Buttonholes on my shirt are too big. Keep slipping open. God it was brutal, the whole thing from dad drunk to his grey face with that big fly crawling on it. The big coffin. Why was that? That last night. Dad was wasted he looked so short, shouting loud for his boots so he could go out, get more drunk. He could have knocked out Mayweather that night easy. Now I’ll never see him again. His drunk red face. Death. Dad is dead. He tried to talk to me, lips moving couldn’t get it out past his teeth, but I heard him tell me to be a god son to mom. You’re a good kid, be a good son to your mother. Tried to say more. Poor dad. He was my dad. He went to Father Conroy for confession so I hope he’s in purgatory now. My father. Mr. Patrick Dignam.